


Eggs Two Ways

by leslielol



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Broken Bones, Episode Related, Gen, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:38:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512076
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leslielol/pseuds/leslielol
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not often Barba has a reason to exercise a set of skills separate from those as a prosecutor. While sat in a holding cell nursing a broken nose, Carisi learns he’s as sharp as ever. </p><p>(A missing-scene fic from 16x15 “Undercover Mother.”)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Eggs Two Ways

**Author's Note:**

> This silly one-shot is a result of egg puns with slashmyheartandhopetoporn.

Barba thinks once about checking his phone for the score.

 _Just_ the once, and the notion quickly passes, because for as annoyed as he is to be called into work on a Sunday, he can’t give less of a shit about the Super Bowl.

Benson’s sent him out of her office because--apparently--his presence unnerves Martha Thornhill, a human trafficker herself, no matter the good intentions that guide her pen and open her wallet. Barba supposes anyone willing to point this out to her would find their rank under _unnerving._

Barba knows, also, that it’s a losing battle to fight Benson on whether the ends justify the means. That sentiment may as well be printed on every NYPD officer’s badge. It’s too loosely applied and Barba is certain he has an ulcer dedicated to this very unit’s inherent preoccupation with it.

He takes a walk to clear his mind. He’s going to be asked how it is SVU came into this trafficking ring, and there’s only so many ways to obfuscate the criminal activity of his own witness. He wouldn’t blame a single juror that blinked at the testimony of one human trafficker against another.

He finds himself at what he’s always considered an odd fixture in the precinct: the holding cells. Their bars went from a fixed steel base in the floor to the ceiling, and even though the cells are tucked down two odd corners, their presence carries on unknown to only those who choose not to visit them. There are shouts, sometimes. Complaints, always. People are inherently opposed to cages.

Barba has to agree. They seem positively medieval.

Such is his own interest as he actively seeks them out. 

Among the reprobates herded into the space like cattle, he spies a familiar form. The face is hidden, ducked low even among his sorry company. It’s the elbows and knees--those radical protrusions--that catch Barba’s eye and name his discovery.

Although Carisi makes for quite the vision--hunched over, ice pack held to his face, hair a mess--Barba is quick to unsettle his focus and look over the rest of the sorry haul. Benson throws around the term _Undercover Op_ like _Casual Friday._ Barba knows he is better served by assuming all manner of theatrics as a given.

Carisi’s presence aside, what Benson has told him of her foolhardy bust of a sex trafficking ring on Super Bowl Sunday--because why _not_ choose the busiest day for such activity to stage an impromptu sting?--suggests there are a number of heavy hitters caught up in their net. 

For lack of any and all reason and hindsight, it seems. 

The group is mostly quiet, which means at least that of all the pimps and traffickers of the world, Benson has picked up those shining examples who know better than to make a noisy plea. They have information to wager for a deal, and it turns Barba’s stomach to know he’ll likely be making a few of those. 

One of the men--tall, thin, careful of the space he took up in the cell--saddles up to the bars nearest Barba. He looks Barba over, figures his smart attire rules him out as a cop, but the unimpressed look on his face keeps him squarely in the field of criminal management. 

“Hey, you a lawyer? I need a lawyer.”

“I am a lawyer, but conveniently I am not an underage girl. You couldn't afford me,” Barba answers sweetly.

Why he deigns to answer at all is, perhaps, a thing of some providence. Carisi’s head shoots up at the familiar voice and--in an instant--he’s left the bench for the bars and is vying for Barba’s favor. 

“Hey, I'm just an innocent bystander,” Carisi says, and points needlessly at the very obvious bloodied and broken nose on his face. “I got a case for assault, right here.” 

Before Barba can play back the move, Carisi makes another. He raises his voice and shouts clear into the bullpen, “Hey, cop! Cop! I want this lawyer! I want to talk with this lawyer!”

Amaro stalks into the room, glancing only briefly at Barba, who makes a face in return. He narrows his eyes and cocks his head as if to say, _I’m not going to fuck up your sting. I’m not an idiot._

“If it'll shut you up,” Amaro says. His tone is flattened and dull, but there is obvious concern for the swelling in Carisi’s face and the fact that he hasn’t yet stopped bleeding. It is just as well that the pimps in the cage aren’t talking and there is nothing for Carisi to overhear; Carisi doesn’t want to be there anymore and has risked making a fool of himself to say so. “Counselor, you mind?”

“I got money,” Carisi prompts, still keeping with his cover. He palms at the wallet in his pants pocket, likely staining the material with the blood on his hands.

“On you? I wonder why.” The line comes easily and Barba immediately thinks he has an aptitude for these things. He plays along further, asking, “Did this happen in policy custody?”

“Yes,” Carisi answers as Amaro hedges, “More or less.”

Barba eyes Amaro curiously. 

“It was… on the cusp.” 

“Vague enough to invoke the legal gods that be,” Barba determines, and then waves for another officer’s assistance. He points to Carisi like he’s choosing from a puppy from a litter. “I’ll take that one.” 

Carisi looks at him with such gratitude it makes Barba regret his thoughtless intrusion. 

Amaro shoots him another look, and this one Barba understands. 

A puppy is a lifelong commitment. 

-

“Oh my god, _thank you._ ” 

Carisi gets the wet-sounding word of gratitude off as soon as they are out of sight, tucked around a corner and holed away into the locker rooms. He shuffles towards the sinks while Barba hangs back. 

Barba can’t very well make an immediate reappearance without his prospective client; he’ll have to wait a spell before venturing back. He looks around the locker room and, because it is slim pickings among benches--most have duffle bags, unzipped shaving kits, or discarded shirts strewn over them--he chooses the most inoffensive place to position himself. He leans against a broken paper towel dispenser facing down the line of sinks. His puffy coat makes it difficult--though not impossible--to fold his arms smartly across his chest. 

He feels very superior doing so.

It’s only after a moment of bemused observation that he breaks free a hand to gesture loosely at Carisi’s face. “Do I even want to know?” 

Carisi bends low over a middle sink (so chosen for its generous water pressure) and begins to wash the blood off his face, neck, and hands. He hisses when his efforts bump his own nose. When he curls into the ache, all of him goes. His fingers disappear into fists and his drooped shoulders give the appearance of an arched back, like he thinks he can possibly coddle the pain and ease it physically. 

“Jesus,” he whines in a breathless gasp, “I think it's broken.” 

“I would have thought that much was obvious,” Barba says before he can think to stop himself. 

He grimaces in sympathy, but otherwise doesn’t know what to do with Carisi’s pain. He settles for watching him nurse it, which is at once fascinating and vastly off-putting. Besides washing the blood from his face, Carisi seems at a loss for how to mend himself. 

He takes in and releases a long, slow breath through his mouth. It is a wordless vote towards acceptance of his current circumstances, touched with a private plea for calm. Barba gets the sense he is coming undone under the botched sting, broken nose, and rough treatment from his colleagues as he kept up his cover. 

Perhaps more than all of that, he didn’t like being stuck in a cell. Least of all with the likes of those who saw profit and gain by trafficking young girls for sex.

“Fuck,” he swears, though the word doesn’t carry any bite. It’s as if he never learned to say it properly. “The ER on Super Bowl Sunday? I’ll be there all night.”

Barba hums in agreement, and realizes he's surprising himself, here. His sympathies extend further than Carisi's present predicament, and in fact can be placed hours from now in whatever sticky waiting room the detective finds himself in, sat amidst crowds of men drunk on a win or a loss, though neither really matters. The madness is in service to its own spectacle, and whatever violence or alcohol poisoning puts them ahead of Carisi in line to be seen by an overworked nurse was surely chosen.

It’s no way to end a weekend. 

“I suppose I could--” 

The offer, even before he makes it, is absurd. 

Admittedly, there isn't much Barba can do to make a fool of himself in front of Carisi, who openly seeks his praise and blatantly covets his influence. Even now, at the mere suggestion of his input, Carisi looks up from the sink, wide-eyed and rapt with interest. Barba moves his hands to rest authoritatively on his hips. 

“It’ll hurt, but I can set it.”

Carisi doesn’t have a response. More than that, he seems not to understand.

“Your nose. That thing on your face that doesn’t know which way to look? I can set it.”

Carisi’s next attempt to respond is no more informed than his previous bout of silence. It’s stunted to the point of debilitation. It’s on life support.

“What.”

“I've done this before,” Barba says, a strange admission if ever he's made one. He frowns, suddenly offended by the suggestion that his skills-- _any of his skills_ \--should be called into question. “You want references?”

“Kind of,” Carisi murmurs, then raises his hands instinctively to cover his swelling nose, as if he feels a threat had been laid instead of an offer, and he fears Barba will go after it without permission.

“Eddie from the Bronx,” Barba announces the name with every assurance and the neighborhood like an esteemed title. It’s outright stately, which Barba feels is true enough. Eddie was very much a white knight in high tops, riding to the rescue on his green 10-speed. 

“He took--and threw--a lot of punches on my behalf. I was many a lunchtime nursemaid.” Barba cocks his head, inspects Carisi’s injuries from several steps away. “Dislocated shoulders were my specialty, but I can manage a broken nose in a pinch.”

Carisi blinks at him. Already, dark circles hug each side of his nose and sweep below his blue eyes like shadows under a lit doorway. 

“I was hoping more along the lines of, you took a class.”

“I learn by doing.”

“I don’t know…” 

Inexplicably, Barba hears Carisi’s ambivalence and thinks, _You precious egg._

Barba pushes off the wall. Now that he's offered, action is imperative. If that means goading Carisi towards his obvious end, so be it. 

“Precioso huevo,” he says, rolling his eyes. 

Carisi nods weakly, assuming whatever Barba’s called him is a genuine and familiar term, one that escapes him, sure, but one he nonetheless must accept. It’s in the tone, Barba thinks, strangely thrilled that he’s gotten away with it.

“Honestly, I’m surprised you don’t know how to do this, yourself.”

There’s an insult there, but Carisi can hardly see over his nose to find it. 

“I didn’t get into a lot of fights growing up,” he reasons. “I kept to myself.”

“Since when does keeping to oneself preclude fights?” Barba asks, eyes shining. “And you’re lying. No one _grows up_ to be talkative--that’s a childhood problem that didn’t get knocked out of you.”

Carisi frowns and fires off a smart remark: “What’s your excuse?”

“Didn’t get knocked out of me, either.” 

Barba wins by neither taking offense nor feeling a lick of shame. 

Then, taking Carisi’s hesitation for a challenge, Barba declares, “I can totally do this.”

By his tone, Carisi only hears _I am doing this,_ and finds he is at a loss to disagree. Whether it’s bloodlust or showmanship that drives Barba in this moment, Carisi acquiesces to his point: Barba _can_ and Barba _will._

“Can I say a prayer first?” 

Barba flashes him a rare smile. “Make it quick.”

Somehow, Carisi doesn’t think it will help. He busies himself instead in clearing a space for himself to sit on a bench. 

Barba, meanwhile, has set upon his preparations. First, he collects a wad of paper towels and hands them to Carisi, who looks like he’s been given a severed head to keep stationary in his lap. 

Next, Barba shrugs out of his jacket and removes his scarf, hanging both in the first available locker. Watching him move with such assurance and grace, Carisi can’t help but imagine a peacock raising and setting its plume. When Barba rolls up his shirt sleeves, securing them at his elbows and leaving his forearms bare, Carisi’s vision shifts towards something less divine. He thinks _The Knick,_ because stood before him now, Barba is one part bruiser, one part mad scientist. It’s lurid and dashing in equal turns.

Barba looks a second away from limbering up, maybe, like he means to punch Carisi's nose back into place. It seems entirely possible that the extent of Barba’s medical know-how boils down to _a little hair of the dog._ He gets close to Carisi, looms over him to inspect the damage and gauge his place in righting it. 

Carisi's hands flex anxiously over the pile of paper towels in his lap. “How much more blood is there gonna be?”

“Eddie wasn't a bleeder, but I don't know about you.” Barba is standing between Carisi’s legs, his hands raised. He waits a beat, asks, “May I?”

Carisi swallows. “Yeah.”

Barba’s hands are warm and heavy. They descend on Carisi’s face like friends during a time of tragedy. They crowd his vision but cannot bring good tidings, only the weight of their own presence. Carisi feels a strange desire to lean into them, obvious pain be damned. It confounds him so much that he fails to act either for or against the effort. 

Barba is speaking, he realizes, though it feels nearer to a hum than words. Barba is positively buzzing across his skin. Carisi wants to laugh and imagines it wouldn’t hurt to do so. Everything already feels so unlike reality.

“Your particular physiology,” Barba says, the words turning slowly over his tongue as his fingers gently prod along the broken line of Carisi's nose, “Currently eludes me.”

Carisi clutches the mass of paper towels instinctively.

The nose isn’t as soft as it looks. The bones are firm and near to the touch, right beneath Barba, save for the skin, his and Carisi’s both. The flesh is another story--completely soft, alternatively chilled by the ice pack and warmed by blood. Without much searching, Barba finds the break. 

Under his hands, Carisi shudders. His gaze turns alert and he seeks out Barba’s eyes for one final confirmation.

Eddie always looked him dead in the eye, too. Barba hears his voice in the back of his head--the patient, practiced tongue of a newly minted English speaker. _Do it, Rafi. I can take it._

He was so sure that Barba--the smart one--inexplicably knew what he was doing, and wouldn't put his nose bone through his brain. To Eddie, any Cubano who could speak as convoluted English as Barba could--the kind so slick that it got him into trouble with kids twice his size--surely knew a thing or two about broken noses. 

Barba blinks away the memories and focuses on the task at hand. He sees the same unwavering trust in Carisi’s eyes, and knows not to disappoint.

“Okay,” he says calmly, “On the count of--”

He flattens one palm on the left side of Carisi’s nose and pushes the other hard to meet it. There is a deafening snap and there is blood.

“Oh _holy--_ ” Carisi wheezes, and rears back, in shock and--honestly?--offense. 

_I fell for that old trick?_

There’s blood spilling out of Carisi’s nose and down his chin, though he’s quick to bury both in his mound of paper towels. And while he registers the force wielded over his face as substantial, there was a lightness to the touch he hadn’t expected. Like a boxer making a wild left hook look majestic.

Barba, to his credit, knows he’s set the thing--the feeling of bone under pressure, the sound it makes when it’s fit back into place. These are as familiar to him as the spines of books and the softened lip of a coffee cup. 

Triumphantly, he turns on his heel and makes his way back towards the sinks. Carisi is a bleeder, and Barba has warm, red splotches over his palms to prove it. 

It’s just blood; Barba has no further feelings about it than he doesn’t want to get any on his clothes.

Behind him, with the initial shock clearing his system, Carisi lets out a low groan of relief. 

Barba knows that sound, too. It still makes him smile. 

He elbows the faucet on and dutifully washes his hands. In the mirror, he spies Carisi leaning back, paper towels held like heavenly tribute under his nose. They soak through quickly, so Barba is ready with more. They trade, and Barba has to wash his hands again. 

“You’d think you have an artery running through your left nostril,” Barba huffs. He doesn’t like to see his good work obscured by what is--essentially--low-budget slasher kabuki. 

“I think it’s stopping,” Carisi says. His voice is wet and colored with blood.

Barba returns to his place against the broken paper towel dispenser. He slips his phone out of the front pocket of his jeans and busies himself with a text, lest he is expected to help any further.

To Benson, he writes: [I sprung Carisi from the clink.] 

[I heard. Thanks for that.] 

Her reply is swiftly joined with another: [Tell him he can go home, with my apologies.]

[Save some of those apologies for me]

For her own good, Benson does not respond to that. 

When Barba next looks up from his phone, Carisi is at the sinks. His face is a stained and sloppy mess, but his first order of business is to lean in close to the mirror and follow with his eyes the fine line returned to his nose. He’s practically giddy with the return to normalcy.

“Benson says you're free to go,” Barba tells him, and pointedly sounds bored now that there are no more back alley medical procedures to perform. “Still want to get a head start in some waiting room?”

“I trust your workmanship,” Carisi says, still eyeballing the effort. Once he comes away satisfied, his hands are back under the faucet, the water going from clear to pink in half a second.

“I am a deft hand at these things.” 

“Either blood is flooding my brain right now, or I really do feel better.” Carisi dries his hands, then holds his right out towards Barba, seeking a handshake. “Thanks.”

After similar exchanges, Eddie always embraced Barba in a hug. He pulled in close as if he could bury the pain of his shoulder or the ache in his face under another body. Barba was always game; this was as much as he could do for his protector. 

So Barba is only mildly disappointed with the proffered hand, but accepts it all the same. Carisi isn’t Eddie, and the blow across Carisi’s face wasn’t meant for Barba. Nothing here strung together so neatly; there was only violence, intercepted or not, and the first skillset Barba had developed to answer for it. 

He means it when he answers back, “My pleasure.”

Carisi’s wild grin almost makes up for it. He wears it in lieu of saying, _I can’t believe you offered to do that, then **fucking did that.**_

He shakes his head in silent wonderment, then sought out a clean shirt from his locker. Whether he weaseled his way back into work or simply sat himself on the subway and went home for the night, he’d need it. Unbuttoning his ruined shirt is a slow process--the throat is wet with water and blood alike, and the cotton has gone heavy around the buttons. 

He cuts into the silence, saying to Barba, “Would have been a good case for you, though. Police brutality, right here.”

“Benson's former Lieutenant,” Barba acknowledges shortly. 

“Yeah,” Carisi says, and though he’s never met the guy, he’s heard stories. “Don't get me wrong, I don't think he's beating himself up over it, none.”

Barba smirks. “Too bad. We know he can throw a punch.”

Carisi makes the grave mistake of snorting in amusement. He gets an ugly dribble of blood down his lips for his trouble and a dizzying pain square between his eyes. Barba doesn’t so much as blink at the display; he knew such a thing could happen and had taken care to stay out of the splash zone. 

Carisi trudges like a wounded soldier to the sinks and _again_ washes his face clean. He gets his dress shirt unbuttoned--finally--and has it off by the time he’s back at his locker and drawing on a slightly wrinkled grey henley. 

When he comes away dressed, mostly presentable, his face back in order (save only for the bruises settling in for a lengthy stay), Barba meets him with a small plastic packet of two Advil tablets. 

“Wow, full service medical care,” Carisi observes with a weak smile. “You just have these on you?”

“I don't do this job on coffee alone.” 

Carisi takes the offhand remark for an invitation. He looks Barba up and down--from the artfully scuffed shoes to the pristine jeans to the black button down--and says, “You don't look like you've come from the office.”

“It's Super Bowl Sunday,” Barba says flatly, though he hardly thinks _his_ wardrobe needs answering for. He wasn’t the one who just lost a shirt to a fight with a broken nose, after all. “Ergo, I was at a tedious Super Bowl Sunday party. Forgive me if I didn’t dress to impress--Tom Brady wasn’t _actually_ there.”

Another text from Benson has Barba holding a hand out, silencing whatever meager comeback Carisi might have at the ready. “Looks like Liv is getting somewhere with one of the pimps,” he says. “I hate it when she's right.”

“I'll come with--”

“And have all your new friends see you cavorting with cops?” Barba interrupts, and doesn’t extend the possibility of a concussion, here. Carisi’s just being stupid. “Benson gave you orders to scram. So scram.”

Barba starts to fix his shirt sleeves. He tugs them straight, then skillfully buttons the cuffs. It’s a feat Carisi was himself unable to replicate even with both hands and a mirror. When Barba collects his coat and scarf and his back is turned, Carisi thinks he sees an audience.

“You're right,” he says. “I got into my fair share of fights. But I've always been tall, so getting socked in the gut was more my punishment.” He shrugs weakly when Barba faces him again. “Man, that first time--I folded like paper.”

He seems ashamed to say so, like this was a thing that first happened a week ago and not when he was all of twelve, gangly and talkative and bright. Embarrassment begets embarrassment, and Barba feels an absurd obligation to admit a sorry truth of his own.

“Eddie wasn’t always around, and this gang wised up, stopped leaving a blatant calling card.” He gestures, then, to Carisi’s nose as an example. “So. You can imagine.”

“Right in the huevos, huh?” 

Carisi watches coolly as Barba’s mouth twists into a firm line. He’s too quick on his feet to surrender anything more, but Carisi feels he’s made headway all the same. 

He grins wide, and if not for his bright eyes and keenness to smile at all, it may have been a gruesome sight. There is still red touching his face, settled under the skin where it belongs. Purple rises to the surface. He is a painted clown, teasing out a translation of Barba’s earlier bout of name-calling, asking incredulously, _“Precious egg?”_

Barba’s eyes roll at Carisi’s obvious glee. 

“You were being one,” he says stiffly, and elbows past him to reach the door. “It was embarrassing.”

Barba looks over his shoulder, intending to deliver one final bland look towards Carisi, something to cut him back down to size. Seeing him standing loosely, without pain painting his face and figure, his ruined shirt in hand, smiling goofily despite his swollen face--it again throws visions of Eddie into Barba’s mind. He remembers the two of them, laughing over their own pain, thrilled for having conquered it. 

He means to spit tar off his tongue, but it spills like honey. 

“Ice that.” 

And though Barba doesn’t stay to see it, Carisi’s smile shrinks into something small and precious.


End file.
